“Governor’s orders. I’m to deliver a letter to Professor Sakamoto there.”
“I see.” Kumo’s eyes left Osawa’s face and went to Akitada’s instead, and this time Akitada thought he caught a flicker of some smoldering, hidden violence which might erupt at any moment. The shift was so sudden and brief that he doubted his eyes.
CHAPTER NINE
The road to Minato continued through the rich plain between the two mountain ranges. This was the “inside country,” the most populated area of the island, where the rice paddies extended on both sides to the mountains, their green rectangles swaying and rippling in the breeze like waves in an emerald sea.
Peasants moved about their daily chores among them, bare-legged and the women often bare-chested, and half-naked children stopped their play to watch round-eyed as the riders passed.
In all their journey that day, they saw only one other horseman. The rider stayed far behind, traveling at the same moderate speed. Osawa, who started to feel better as time passed, was eager to reach Minato before dark, and they made better time than the day before. Halfway, they took a brief rest at a shrine to water their horses and eat some of the rice dumplings provided by Kumo’s cook. They had just dismounted and led their horses under the shrine gates into the shady grove when they heard the other rider. A moment later he passed, hunched in his saddle, incurious about the shrine, his eyes fixed on the road ahead.
The man looked vaguely familiar. Akitada searched his memory as to where he might have come across a short fellow with a large nose but failed.
The sky clouded over after that, and in another hour the wind picked up. Osawa grumbled to himself, but Akitada breathed the moisture-laden air with pleasure. He caught the first hint of the sea and knew they were close to the coast. Soon after, the rain began to fall.
“I have no rain cape,” complained Osawa. “The weather was so fine when we left that I refused the offer of one. And now there won’t be another village till we reach Minato.” A gust of wind drove the heavy drizzle into their faces, and he added irritably, “If we reach it today.”
They reached Lake Kamo in spite of the rain and muddy road, but the heavily overcast sky had caused dusk to fall early, and there was still half the lake to skirt to reach Minato on the opposite shore.
Minato turned out to be a large village between the lake and the ocean. Its inhabitants were mostly fishermen who fished both the open sea and the lake. Minato was well known for its excellent seafood, and its houses and shrines looked more substantial than those of other villages.
But the travelers were by then too miserable to be interested in anything but shelter, a change of clothes, and some hot food and wine. The rain had soaked their robes until they clung heavily to their cold skin, and Osawa and Genzo were so exhausted that they were in danger of falling from the saddle.
On the deserted village street, Akitada stopped a barefoot old woman under a tattered straw rain cape to ask directions to Professor Sakamoto’s house. She pointed across the lake to the shore on the outskirts of Minato where several villas and summerhouses overlooked the water. When they had wearily plodded there, Sakamoto’s residence turned out to be walled and gated. Unfortunately, the servant who answered Osawa’s knocking claimed his master was absent and he had no authority to admit strangers. He seemed in a hurry to get out of the rain.
Osawa started to berate the man but was too exhausted to make much of a job of it. The servant merely played dumb and refused to admit them or provide any information.
“Perhaps an inn for tonight?” Akitada suggested to the desperate and shivering Osawa. “We passed a nice one on our way here.” Osawa just nodded.
An hour later, Osawa, dry, bathed, and fed with an excellent fish soup provided by the proprietress, took to his bed in the inn’s best room, and Genzo went to sleep over his warmed wine in the reception room of the inn. Akitada, more used to riding than the others, had washed at the well and then borrowed some old clothes from the inn’s owner. His own robe and trousers were draped over a beam in the kitchen, and he now sat by the fire, dressed in a patched shirt and short cotton pants held by a rope about his middle, devouring a large bowl of millet and vegetables. Not for him the delights of the local seafood or warmed wine, or even of decent rice, but he was hungry.
Their hostess was a plain, thin woman in her thirties. His borrowed clothes had belonged to her dead husband. She was not unkind, but too busy with Osawa to pay attention to him. Besides, Genzo had informed her immediately that the fellow Taketsuna was only a convict. After that it had taken all of Akitada’s charm to beg a change of clothes. She drew the line at feeding him a meal like the one she had prepared for Osawa.
Instead she busied herself with starting the rice for the next morning and grinding some dumpling flour with a large stone mortar and pestle.
When he was done with his millet, Akitada went into the scullery and washed his bowl, drying it with a hemp cloth. Then he took a broom and swept the kitchen. That chore done, he headed outside to bring in more firewood, and looked around for other work.
She had watched him-at first suspiciously in case he might steal something, then with increasing astonishment. Now she asked, “Aren’t you tired?”
“A little,” he said with a smile. “I noticed that you don’t have much help, so I thought I’d lend a hand before I rest.” A smile cracked her dour face, and she wiped her hands on her apron. “I lost my husband, but I’m strong.” Then she went to a small bamboo cabinet and took out a flask and a cup.
“Here,” she said. “Sit down and talk to me while I make the dumplings. How do you like your master?” He sat and thanked her. “Mr. Osawa? He’s fair enough, I guess. A good official, but he claims he’s overworked.” The wine was decent. Akitada sipped it slowly, savoring its sweetness and warmth, wondering if she had saved it for a special occasion.
“Is he married?”
“I don’t believe so.”
“Ah. Poor man. And you? Where are you from?” He gave her a heavily altered story of his life. Only what he told about his family was the truth, because he suspected that she, being a woman, would catch him in a lie most easily there.
As it was, talking about Tamako and his baby son caused a painfully intense longing for them, and his feelings must have shown, for when he paused, she shook her head and muttered,
“What a pity! What a pity! It’s terrible to be alone in this life.” Perhaps this small comment more than anything he had seen or heard brought close what exile to this island meant to the men who were condemned to spend their lives here, working under intolerable conditions if they were ordinary criminals, or just measuring out their days in enforced idleness if high-ranking court nobles.
“Will you play a song for me?” she asked with a glance at the flute, which he had laid beside him.
He obliged, gladly. She was inordinately pleased when he was done. Perhaps he had touched a long-since- abandoned chord of romance in her. In any case, she unbent some more.
“I hear you were turned away at the professor’s place,” she said, her nimble fingers shaping perfect white spheres. When Akitada mentioned Osawa’s disappointment, she said with a sniff, “The professor’s getting drunk in the Bamboo Grove as usual.”
“In this rain?” he asked, misunderstanding.
She laughed and became almost attractive. “The Bamboo Grove is a restaurant. Haru’s place. Besides, it’s stopped raining.”
“I heard the professor keeps company with the good people.
Glad to hear that he’s friendly with the common folk, too.”
“Only when he’s drinking. The rest of the time he stays to himself in that fine house of his. He’s writing a great history book about Sadoshima. Sometimes the good people visit him and then he has dinner parties. You know the Second Prince was murdered at his house? You should have seen all the fuss to get ready for that party. We were all put to work cooking and carrying. The professor’s a bit of a skinflint, but he spent his money then. The best
